Watch NASCAR Online – Watch Free NASCAR Streams

Want to watch NASCAR online? Check out the free NASCAR streams on WatchSports9.com!

Watch free NASCAR and never miss your favorite racers like Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart race with the rest of the class in free NASCAR races online brought right to your computer.

NASCAR News and Race Coverage

AutoRacing1 – Provides excellent coverage of not just NASCAR but many other racing series including Formula 1, IndyCar, ALMS, Grand-Am, NHRA, as well as featured article, the latest rumors, hot news, forums, a racing store, links to other great sites, schedules, and automotive.

Jayski’s Silly Season – Jayski’s is a popular portal site linking to NASCAR coverage of past and present races, including the Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Camping World, car paint schemes, stats, driver tributes, tracks, as well as teams & drivers.

ESPN NASCAR – ESPN provides some of the best and most in depth coverage of upcoming NASCAR events including updated standings, results, race schedules, drivers, fantasy, blogs, track conditions, and live chat! ESPN award winning coverage makes this a must visit for NASCAR fans.

Sports Illustrated NASCAR – Sports Illustrated has great NASCAR coverage from Lars Anderson, Dustin Long, Tim Tuttle, and Cary Estes with articles like Inside NASCAR, the NASCAR mailbag, and the NASCAR Power Rankings.

Gambling on NASCAR Races

A Quick Guide on How to Gamble on NASCAR – This site provide some quick tips for beginners on how to best on NASCAR races. What’s more exciting than following a NASCAR race when there’s money at stake in it for you?

Wagering on NASCAR races is simple and one of the easiest things to do. There are three main types of bets when it comes to any race. You can bet on a driver to win a race, to place on the podium (top three drivers), or place a bet that one driver will finish higher than another driver.

When looking at the odds for each race you will often see a driver’s name next to a number. For instance if someone sees:

Jeff Burton +200
Mark Martin +350
Field +500

That means when you bet $10 on Jeff Burton you win $20, in addition to getting the $10 back you bet, if he wins the race. A bet on Mark Martin would get you back $35 should yopou place that same $10 bet. A bet on the Field is a wager on the other drivers not listed. The odds are very low these drivers ever get to win so it’s not wise betting on them, even with the greater payoff.

When putting down a bet for a driver to finish in the top three, the odds will be much lower since there is a higher probability that one of them will place since there are now three winners that the bookmakers must pay for.

Another way to bet on NASCAR is on head-to-head finished between the drivers. This might look like:

Jeff Gordon -140
Mark Martin +110

In this case, if you were to bet on Gordon to finish the race higher than Martin you need to put down a bet of $14 to win $10. If you think that Martin will win, you need to bet $10 to win $11

Tips to Help You Get an Edge Betting on NASCAR

Here are some things to keep in mind when placing wagers on NASCAR.

Playing the Streak – Drivers tend to get into long streak, when they drive well they often stay hot for several races. The opposite is also true when they are driving poorly, and it often takes them a few races to get out of their funk. It’s important to analyze and consider their recent and past performance when considering every driver.

Superstar Drivers – NASCAR races finishes are usually dominated by a handful of superstar drivers so it’s important to look at how driver has finished in top 5 and top 10 finishes for every track. Some superstars just don’t perform well on certain tracks, thus giving guys with less than who routinely finished near the top a good chance to win if the top guys falter. It’s important to know this in order to get top value for your bets.

Know Your Track – There are four different types of tracks used on the NASCAR circuit. They are short, intermediate, superspeedway, and road courses. Each type of track comes with its own challenges, and each track may be unique so that each short track may differ a little bit and offer a different level of comfort to each driver. You must know how each driver performs on each track in order to make an informed decision on who to bet on.

The Best Crews – In races where mere milliseconds can separate the finishers, its imperative to have a strong crew as well as a talented Crew Chief behind each driver. This is especially important in long races that may go past 5 hours or more as driver need every advantage they can get.

Betting on NASCAR vs Other Sports

There are certain monetary advantages to betting on NASCAR. Because of the larger field of competitors and outcomes for each race, the payouts are larger. By picking the winner of a race, you can easily win four times the money you laid down by choosing the favorite drivers. That means winning one race can pay for the next several bets. This is a much greater payout compared to the football, baseball, and basketball where choosing the favorite usually only gets you your money back.

The reason for this is simple, unlike the other sports, there are no favorite to win so each driver is seen as a underdog. Even the strongest drivers will usually start as 3/1 or 4/1 underdogs. Betting on NASCAR also has a very high break even point so even a long string of losses can be overcome with one winning race. For example, if you lose five races but win just one, depending on who you pick you can actually make a profit on despite making just one correct decision in six races.

Types of NASCAR Bets

Some of the more popular ways to best on NASCAR are:

Odds to Win is the most popular and simple way to wager. You simply pick which driver wins the race.

Matchups allows you to pair two drivers and you pick which one finishes higher than the other.

Top Finishing Driver is much like matchups but it is played with a larger pool of drivers, thus it pays better as you must pick one driver to finish higher than all the others.

Manufacturer to Win is a simple wager in which you must choose which of the four car manufacturers (Toyota, Dodge, Ford, or Chevy) will finish first

Manufacturer Exacta is another variation of the manufacturer to win but pays higher because you must pick both the first and second place cars in order to win the bet.

Where to Bet on NASCAR

Oddschecker is a fantastic site that shows odds from a range sites including Bet365, Skybet, Paddy Power, Stan James, Betfair and 888Sport.

Bovada Sports also has some excellent odds for NASCAR fans looking to play down a bet.

It also oversees NASCAR Local Racing, the Whelen Modified Tour, the Whelen All-American Series, and the NASCAR iRacing.com Series. NASCAR sanctions over 1500 races at over 100 tracks in 39 US states and Canada. NASCAR has presented exhibition races at the Suzuka circuit in Japan, Motegi circuits in Mexico, and in Australia, the Calder Park Raceway.

NASCAR traces its roots back to bootlegging. During Prohibition in the United States during the 1920s and the early 1930s, people often resorted to making their own alcohol to get around government restrictions on alcohol. Home distilled liquor quickly became popular in rural areas such as Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Georgia where farmers found they could make more money turning their corn crops into booze than selling it as food. The homemade booze was known as bathtub gin and because the law prevented the private sale and distillation of alcohol, bootleg liquor manufacturers and their brewed hard liquor were always being hounded and chased by the police.

To get away from the cops, the bootleggers had to outrun them. And in order to do that they had to soup up their cars by creating bigger, more powerful supercharged engines with greater suspensions and heavy duty shocks to make a faster vehicle that would allow them to carry the illicit booze to market. They used stock cars or everyday cars that would look inconspicuous and help them avoid detection by police and revenue agents from the Prohibition Bureau. Cars used to run liquor were called “moonshine runners” and they carried the homemade booze.

Bootlegging

Since bootlegging was their livelihood, the drivers not only had to drive fast on narrow roads in the country at night but they also had to modify their cars to make them more suitable for the job. They had to drive with several dozens cases of liquor in their cars while outrunning the police at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour without amenities like hydraulics and power steering. This made the bootleggers very good at driving and evading the cops. Most of the illicit booze ended up in speakeasies or secret bars where people went to drink during prohibition and pass away the time while listening to hot jazz music and enjoying themselves.

Even after the end of Prohibition, bootlegging continued as a heavy taxation on alcohol ensured there was still profit to be made running moonshine. When the bootleggers weren’t driving they began to challenge each other to see who had the fastest cars. They often raced each other on the weekends for bragging rights and by night they would use their cars to transport corn liquor from homemade stills in the woods to the cities and towns to bars and other places of sale.

As the word grew about these races, people started coming out to see drivers race against each other and soon seeing fast moonshine runners racing each other became a popular pastime in the backwoods and roads of the Southern United States.

After World War II

Following the Second World War, many of the men who served in the war came back and desired newer and faster automobiles – and American manufacturers complied by giving the consumers what they wanted. Now that weapons of war were no longer needed, GM and Ford and other car companies used their manufacturing capabilities to construct passenger automobiles. Soon the market had fast, strong cars loved by everyone and buying a car soon became a rite of passage for many young teenagers.

While different parts of US had preference for certain cars, the Western states loved sporty cars and the Midwestern states loved those with uncovered wheels, the Southeast remained devoted to the stock car. Many of these cars were still constructed to deliver and transport booze while being raced in competitions that took place across the South.

The drivers running booze were real daredevils who were involved in a dangerous business of high speed driving – often at night with police in hot pursuit. What was at stake was going to jail as bootlegging was a Federal Charge, as well as losing all their income and means of support for their families. After drinking became legal, the excitement of going to speakeasies ended, and people went on with their normal lives. However they also began longing for a surge of excitement so they started attending races between the bootleggers as they battled it out to see who had the fastest cars and quickest reflexes. The exhilaration of the races started drawing crowds to see bootleggers race in the hills of the South.

The Father of NASCAR

In 1938, Bill France began organizing races on the hard sands of Daytona Beach. In those days the winners raced for fun, bragging rights and boxes of cigars, liquor, and motor oil. France foresaw the growth of NASCAR long before it would become popular and he knew the sport needed to be organized with a proper list of winners, race statistics and records for it to prosper. However, his plans were halted by the Second World War when drivers went away to fight and new cars ceased to be produce.

After the war, the drivers came back to race on Daytona but France knew the sport could not grow unless there was a recognized sanctioning body looking after stock car racing. In 1948, he started recruiting promoters and convinced them to agree to a set of rules governing the sport. This was not easy as there were already many boosters and organizations around with their own unique guidelines for each racing event. France managed to convince 35 other organizers from other associations to settle on one set of rules after meeting everyone four times. The organization would be called NASCAR or the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. The first race was held in 1949 in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the ‘stricty stock’ division, which meant that only American cars with complete bodies and hoods, fenders, and grills could be raced.

The first race was won by Glenn Dunnaway in a 1947 Ford but during the post race inspection illegal shocks were discovered in his car leading him to be disqualified and the second place driver, Jim Roper, to be crowned the winner. In 1950, the superspeedway became a reality as the first southern 500 race was held that year in a track that was bigger and faster than any that the drivers had ever been on. This race was a major event in drawing people to a sport that some had never previously seen.

Throughout the 50s, the sport continued to accrue a following with major sponsors like Champion Sparkplugs, Ford, Chrysler, Chevrolet and Pure Oil all taking part. Car manufacturers soon realized spikes in car sales following wins by the drivers of the cars they sponsored to drive, thus causing them to contribute even more money into their racing programs. Tire companies also got into the act as increasing speeds of the cars resulted a rush of tire development at Firestone and Goodyear. Engine advancement also boomed with such developments as Smokey Yunick’s Chevrolet 427 mystery engine – leading other competitors to spend money trying to catch up and find out what made his engine so successful.

The engine war culminated in 1964 when Richard Petty brought a hemi engine to the race and won the Daytona 500. Around this time, certain automobile body styles from Dodge and Plymouth made other manufacturers realize the importance of streamlining their cars to reduce wind resistance. This in conjunction with further developments in engines which produced top end horsepower enabled even greater velocities on high-speed tracks.

NASCAR in the 21st Century

The growth of NASCAR can be linked to something that few sports can offer. Every week the best drivers and their teams go head to head against the other top drivers, which is like the best team in football fighting it out every week, something that might only happen once or twice in every NFL season.

Today NASCAR has come from very humble beginnings to one of the most popular spectator sports in the U.S. It has over 75 million followers, and 2 out of every 5 fans is female with the majority being white collar or skilled workers. More than 7 million fans attends the live races each year with another 270 million more watching on the television and merchandise sales exceeding $2 billion.